A brief history of Hollywood's season of fun, featuring the blockbuster of the year for a generation or two. This year's is up to you.PLUS: Get More on Summer Movies >>

1975: Jaws

1975: Jaws

Domestic box office: $260M

Before 1975, big studios generally filled summer with the kind of excrement that was considered successful if it made a couple bucks more than it cost. Then Jaws came along and made studio heads realize they were gonna need to aim for something more. Jaws whet corporate appetites for big profits so quickly that, as one critic put it, "studios wanted every film to be Jaws." One might assume the movie-going public agreed, having made it the highest-grossing film ever at the time — after only 78 days.

1976: The Omen

1976: The Omen

Domestic box office: $61M

In addition to Jaws's animatronic shark and iconic poster, it was a huge hit largely because of the marketing strategy employed by Twentieth Century Fox: heavy TV advertising followed by a summer release. The studio tried it again with Omen and succeeded in making devil-child horror huge. Unlike Jaws, the movie did not get a ride at Universal Studios.